Schaffer Schuffle on Immigration

Mike Riley has an interesting piece today's Denver Post further teasing out the phony triangulation on immigration that Schaffer is trying to pull, likely just so he can hang on to what little business support he has.

A couple of weeks ago, Schaffer was unwilling to talk about immigration because he was not ready to stake out a position. Now he's billing himself as to the left of Mark Udall and John McCain on immigration. That may help him with the business community, but it's certainly not going to help him with the base.

The model he says he wants to follow is that of the Northern Mariana Islands. You'll remember that's the place where convicted felon Jack Abramoff, et. al., lobbied to quash an investigation in to the horrible conditions there, to prevent the islands from gaining a Congressional delegate, and to exempt the islands from federal minimum wage laws and workplace safety standards. Says Congressman George Miller:

Let’s remember what they paid for: a protection racket that sheltered a sweatshop industry that systematically exploited tens of thousands of impoverished foreign workers -- mostly Asian women -- who were little better than indentured servants; a sweatshop industry that earned some of the heaviest fines in U.S. history for violating labor laws; an industry repeatedly cited by the Departments of Justice, Interior and other federal agencies. They were defending a corrupt immigration system that regularly approved visas for non-existent jobs, resulting in hundreds of women being forced into the sex trade, including prostitution. [emphasis supplied]

Bob Schaffer in the Post article above:

"The concept of prequalifying foreign workers in their home country under private-sector management is a system that works very well in one place in America," he said of the islands' program. "I think members of Congress ought to be looking at that model and be considering it as a possible basis for a nationwide program."

Some of the reported consequences of the program that Bob Schaffer thinks works so well are sweatshops, virtual slavery, human trafficking, child labor, prostitution, and forced abortion. And now he wants to bring that kind of program here.